Halo 2 Contest
Well, I was going to finish up my application and send it Mike’s way today, but since he’s extended the contest two more weeks, I’m just going to post a screenshot of what I’m calling Halo Reader 1.0. This is the application as I would have posted it today, but with more time (and a long holiday weekend to boot) I’m going to keep coding towards Halo Reader 2.0. I had to ditch a ton of features to fit development into one week, so I’m looking forward to the extended time to add more features.
FYI, I’m not eligible for any of the prizes, but just couldn’t resist such a fun project.
Some of the features included in Halo Reader 1.0 include:
- Distinct feed URL’s remembered in shared object and presented in editable combo box at start-up (not shown in screenshot)
- ActionScript parsing routine for feed title to access game type, location, and playlist
- ActionScript parsing routine for feed description to access score, kills, deaths, and assists
- Leveraging Flex DateFormatter to take XML string for “pubDate” and make it a real Date object
- DataGrid can be sorted on parsed title data and/or date played (a.k.a. pubDate)
- Selection in DataGrid presents bar chart of game data (kills, deaths, assists)
- Scores shown separately in DataGrid for sorting and review
- In the “details” pane, the title is a Link control that launches a new window the Bungie stats
- “Next refresh” is a Link control that presents a menu when clicked
- Refresh rate is 15 minutes by default, but menu gives option to refresh now or load new feed
- Developed in Flex and can be easily resized at the application level, or using the divider bar
- No server code used - all data management happens within Flex (if I get around to it I’ll post my reasoning for this decision)
